Iowa Kids: After a crime, a second chance

Iowa keeps most kids out of court; activists say that's still not enough

Nov. 2, 2013

Alec Neumann writes his name on a Halloween invitation after meeting with friends and members of his church group Oct. 23 at UNI in Cedar Falls. Before going through a restorative justice program, Neumann said he didn't see himself going to college. / Bryon Houlgrave/The Register

National, state data hard to compare

Like the national trend, juvenile cases in Iowa have declined, shrinking by 26 percent since 2008. But juvenile justice experts say it is impossible to compare Iowa’s numbers to the rest of the country with any exactitude, because practices vary widely. In some counties across the country, diversion may occur at the point of police, leading to only the most serious cases being referred to court. In other areas, police may refer every juvenile they come into contact with to court, leading to more cases being diverted later in the process by juvenile court services. “There’s not a right way of doing it,” said Melissa Sickmund, director of the National Center for Juvenile Justice. What the numbers do reveal is that in Iowa, “a significant volume of kids get diverted,” said Dave Kuker, an analyst for the Iowa Department of Human Rights’ Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning. “That is the way the system is structured.”

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The night before finals week of his junior year of high school, Alec Neumann wasn’t home studying, and he wasn’t at the church group meeting where he told his parents he would be.

Instead, he was sitting on a curb in Waukee, trying to process the fact that he’d just been apprehended for shoplifting.

Earlier in the night, he and a friend were spotted pilfering airsoft guns and pellets from a West Des Moines department store. In total, they stole almost $300 worth of merchandise. On his way home, the police caught up with him.

“It felt like a daze,” said Neumann, now 18.

Youths charged with crimes face consequences that can last a lifetime. Neumann, it turns out, was offered the chance to keep his record clean through a nationally praised restorative justice program in West Des Moines. Iowa steers the vast majority of juveniles into rehabilitation and away from the court system, data show.

Yet the options available to a young person suspected of a crime in Iowa can differ widely depending on where the crime was committed and the discretion of arresting and intake officers. The harsh consequences of a criminal record and the patchwork nature of diversion programs are among the unprecedented array of challenges facing Iowa’s kids, the subject of a yearlong Des Moines Register special project.

Neumann’s case was one of more than 19,000 complaints, or cases referred to juvenile court by law enforcement, filed against Iowa youth in 2012. That same year, more than 14,000 complaints were diverted away from the courts.

Even so, the impact can be devastating. Young people with a criminal history are expected to declare their crimes on applications for college, financial aid, apartments and jobs — in many cases even if there’s no finding of guilt.

Researchers argue that for low-level offenders, simply becoming involved in the juvenile justice system can lead to trauma, stigmatization and future adult criminality.

“If you take a kid that’s a little bit messed up and intervene too much, you can almost create more problems,” said Carla Barrett, a sociology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

It’s a tough road even if a child’s record is kept clean, said Paul Turner, lead organizer of A Mid-Iowa Organizing Strategy, or AMOS, a community organization of faith and advocacy groups.

“The minute you’re in the system, it’s really hard to get out,” Turner said. “You had to go into a courtroom, you had to face a judge. One night in a detention center, one day in a court facility leaves a lasting impression on juveniles.”

The path is even steeper for juveniles sent to adult court and judged to be felons. Incarcerated juveniles shoulder disruptions in their development and education.

Where they can live and work and their right to vote can be affected for the rest of their lives.

"Tough on crime" gives way to rehabilitation

The juvenile justice system is slowly evolving in response to these long-lasting consequences on youth from court involvement. Alternative rehabilitative and restorative options that aim to keep youth out of the court system are gradually usurping the “tough on crime” approach to dealing with juvenile offenders punitively, long a tenet of U.S. juvenile justice policy.

The movement to divert kids out of the court system is well-rooted in Iowa. Options can be as simple as writing a letter of apology, attending a daylong shoplifting class, or doing a set number of community service hours. Or they can be as involved as a family therapy course or a drug treatment program.

“Times are changing,” said Mark Umbreit, director of the Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking and a social work professor at the University of Minnesota. A large impetus comes from the fiscal crisis, as communities realize traditional corrections come with a high price tag, Umbreit said.

Detention in the juvenile justice system in Iowa costs taxpayers $257 to $340 per day, according to the Iowa Department of Human Rights. So a week of detention could cost more than the $1,909 per child for West Des Moines’ six-month Youth Justice Initiative. That’s funded by grants, schools and community fundraising, supplemented by attendance fees.

“The fiscal impact of diversion has never been more relevant,” Umbreit said.

The change in philosophy about how best to treat juvenile offenders also stems from increasing knowledge of how the adolescent brain works.

Around the time of puberty, a system in the brain is aroused to seek instant gratification, said Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University psychology professor. “We can think of this as sort of an accelerator that gets pressed down to the floor in early to mid-adolescence, before the braking system is fully mature. For some kids, this leads to criminal behavior. It’s not something they have control over. We ought to take that into account when we decide how to respond to their crimes.”

Research also shows that juveniles’ response to punishment differs from adults’.

“When you punish kids instead of concentrating on what they did, they get angry, defiant, they see themselves as victims, and the cycle just keeps going on that way,” said Howard Zehr, a professor at Eastern Mennonite University who is considered the “grandfather of restorative justice” since the late 1970s. “If you let them into the system, it’s a chance to make them offenders.”

Restorative justice looks at everyone affected

Alec Neumann can’t say why he shoplifted. “There was no purpose behind it. I guess it was just for the thrill,” he said. “The ride.”

What he does know is that his actions that night culminated a couple of years of bad behavior. Formerly a straight-A student, his grades at Iowa Christian Academy sank to a 1.9 GPA by his junior year. He became depressed. And he started sneaking cigarettes, beer and pot.

“You start to lose yourself,” Neumann said. “You just find yourself going down this slope. You’re in such a deep hole that you don’t feel any motivation to get up out of it.”

But he was given a way out. Instead of facing a criminal charge, Neumann, a first-time, low-level offender, was the perfect candidate for the West Des Moines Police Department’s Youth Justice Initiative.

Rather than focusing on punishment, restorative justice brings together offenders, victims and representatives of the community into a circle, where the needs of all involved are recognized. In place of court-mandated punishment, the offender makes a plan to repair the harm he or she has done to the victim and the community.

Programs that bring offenders in contact with victims can reduce recidivism, research shows. A 2003 report by the University of Tennessee and the University of Minnesota found that in a sample of 9,307 juvenile offenders who participated in victim-offender mediation, re-offenses declined 26 percent.

“The way I see restorative justice is that it takes a big-picture look at what happened and who’s been impacted, and it also takes that big-picture look at the young person,” said Claudia Henning, director of the Youth Justice Initiative. “There are other things going on with that one person that we want to address, and not only look at cleaning up the mess that’s been made now.”

Which options are best? Views sometimes differ

Advocates of juvenile justice reform in Iowa want to see more restorative justice options for young offenders.

“Restorative justice is a different paradigm, a different way of looking at how we respond to wrongdoing,” said Fred Van Liew, a former Polk County prosecutor and director of the Center for Restorative Justice Practices in Des Moines. “We’re just flat out missing the boat if that isn’t the way we operate our system.”

Prosecutors caution, however, that restorative justice isn’t always the answer. The option generally is not offered to violent or repeat offenders.

Frank Severino, Polk County juvenile bureau chief, contends diversions of any sort can interfere with necessary court processes that benefit both juveniles and victims. For instance, a victim requesting a no-contact order can get that only in court.

“I think the philosophy that all cases be diverted or handled in a restorative justice way is not really in tune with our laws in the state, nor is it in tune with what is in the best interest of our juveniles and the community,” Severino said.

Umbreit, director of the Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking, agreed that “restorative justice is not a cure-all to everything. We need a lot of the other systems we have in place.”

On the flip side, not every youth who does qualify has access to restorative justice.

In Iowa, the person in a position to make the decision on which program is right for which juvenile can vary by municipality, county or court district. Attitudes toward restorative justice differ depending on the intake officer or the police officer.

“So many of our programs are just discretionary, whenever somebody wants to refer to one,” said Zehr, the longtime restorative justice advocate. “It’s hard to keep that flowing.”

"Not a fun experience," but it was life-changing

When the right candidate is matched with the right program, it can be life-changing.

As a participant in the Youth Justice Initiative, Neumann met with his circle monthly and went to family classes for six months. He had to take regular drug and alcohol tests and pay the damages for his crime.

With the help of the group, he decided to do 50 hours of community service. The process from start to finish yielded radical change.

“We had the first circle meeting, and I was pretty shut down,” Neumann said. “It was not a fun experience. But each circle, you find yourself trusting everything a little more.”

Today, Neumann is record free and studying sales and marketing at the University of Northern Iowa. He attributes his success to the intervention he received as a result of his crime.

“Before coming to this program, I didn’t see myself going to college. I didn’t know if I was going to make it,” he said.

If he hadn’t been apprehended when he was, “it probably would have been with something worse. Looking back, honestly, it scares me at times.”